Posts tagged DMCA

You wouldn't think that genealogy websites would have much need to defend copyrights, but they're apparently quite zealous -- so long as you're interested in alien spaceships, at least. Ancestry.com has forced enthusiast site The Black Vault to take down legions of declassified US records on UFO r...

Reddit may not be subject to as much legal scrutiny as tech giants like Google or Microsoft, but there's enough of it that the internet community has published its first transparency report. The site says that it received 55 demands for user info through subpoenas, search warrants and emergency re...

Google may be bending over backwards to eliminate piracy in its search results, but it's clearer than ever that the internet giant is fighting an uphill battle. TorrentFreak has sifted through Google's weekly data to discover that the company fielded over 345 million copyright takedown requests in...

Tinkering to get better performance out of your ride is one of the more rewarding aspects of vehicle ownership. The thing is, as cars have become more and more computer-dependent, getting a horsepower boost or better gas mileage by swapping exhaust systems or air filters is just the beginning. Som...

Today's dispatch from the department of irony comes courtesy of Marvel Studios. When the trailer for The Avengers: Age of Ultron prematurely appeared online, the studio went into lockdown to find the leaker's identity. According to documents found by Mashable, the outfit has traced the incident to...

It's great that many games have strong online components, but there's a dark side to that connectedness: if the developers (or their partners) shut down necessary servers, those titles are likely to break. You won't have to worry about your favorite game going dark if the Electronic Frontier Found...

The anti-piracy road hasn't played out easy for Google, to the point where past claims have stated that the company's efforts simply aren't working. But Google says it's doing everything it can to combat piracy across its services, of which Search is likely the most important one -- at least to co...

Grooveshark's disappearing and reappearing act looks like it could finally come to an end; permanently. A Manhattan judge has ruled that because Grooveshark employees themselves had uploaded 5,977 songs to the service and infringing on copyrights in the process, the outfit couldn't be granted safe...

The White House today announced that President Obama was signing the "Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act" into law after the bill passed successfully through both the House and Senate.
Today, President Obama will sign into law the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Co...

Getting Democrats and Republicans to pass an act of Congress is the exception more than the rule. But if there's one thing both sides of the aisle can agree on, it's that the US policy for unlocking phones is backwards. Early last year, it became illegal to unlock your handset for use on other car...

Today, the House of Representatives unanimously approved legislation that would legalize the process of unlocking a smartphone to use on another carrier, reports the LA Times. The bipartisan bill passed through the Senate earlier this year and will now move onto the desk of President Barack Obama....

The Android community just got a big (if brief) scare. In the space of a few days, Qualcomm has both made and retracted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act request that took down 116 code repositories (many of them Android-focused) that were allegedly using the chip maker's confidential technology...

It's time for a grab bag edition of Ask Massively! A reader named Nicholas is up first:
I was wondering if you could help me remember a game studio that was developing a new Korean action- MMORPG game engine (and it wasn't Bless, Blade and Soul, or ArcheAge). In the tech demo, no environment was b...

To our delight, the recent ruling that phone subsidy unlocks are no longer protected by copyright law has sparked a lot of attention from the general public as well as the US government. However, some of the carriers are predictably not too excited by the amount of negative light it sheds on their...

We should have known that it wouldn't take long for someone in congress to take up the fight to re-legalize cellphone unlocking. Those championing the effort on the floor of the Senate are Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) , Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Mike Lee (R-UT) who introduced the Wireless Consumer Cho...

A petition on the White House's website to work for a new law universally allowing the unlocking of cell phones recently raised more than 100,000 signatures from the public, and the White House has now officially responded to the idea, stating its support. The petition refers to Section 1201 of...

The recent ruling that effectively bans third-party phone unlocking has ruffled more than a few feathers, and the people have spoken with their electronic signatures -- 114,322 of them, to be exact. Now the petition to the White House, which asks that DMCA protection of phone unlockers be reconsid...

The petition to reinstate the DMCA protection of smartphone unlockers has reached 100,000 signatories on We The People. As it's now hit the golden limit, the White House will have to issue an official response explaining its stance on the matter. The petition also asked that if the Librarian of Co...

Primed goes in-depth on the technobabble you hear on Engadget every day -- we dig deep into each topic's history and how it benefits our lives. You can follow the series here. Looking to suggest a piece of technology for us to break down? Drop us a line at primed *at* engadget *dawt* com. On Octob...